SES reminds public of storm planning

About 50 State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers worked until late yesterday cleaning up storm damage in central Victoria.

They received 140 jobs, mostly for damaged roofs and fallen trees. The worst hit areas were Bendigo, Woodend and Gisborne.

The SES's Stan Hendy says it is a reminder for people to regularly maintain trees and roofs.

"People need to be mindful and make certain that items and roofing and so forth is secured well, especially in the winds we've had and also the trees around their buildings are safe and that they've actually been inspected for their stability," he said.

Powercor's call centre in Bendigo fielded about 12,000 calls from across Victoria during and after the storms.

The storms were widespread over much of the state and caused power outages in Eaglehawk, Inglewood and Woodend, affecting more than 3,000 customers.

Powercor's Damien Batey says 60 people were working in the Bendigo call centre during the peak of the storms, but some people could not get through for up to 35 minutes.

"I know that they were so inundated that they called people back from annual leave just to come and help and get a few more bodies around the place to pick up phones," he said.

"Everyone at Powercor from field resources to call centre to staff members in the city have been been stretched to the max."

Meanwhile, there has been a small amount of run-off into Coliban Water storages, near Kyneton.

Chief executive Geoff Michell says the main benefit from this week's rain is that gardens have been given a good soaking and people will not need to water for about a week.

He says Bendigo, Kyneton and Castlemaine will remain on stage three restrictions.

"It has only made a small difference, we didn't quite have the amount of rain that Melbourne had, up in our catchments, it ranged between 80 and 130 millimetres and it looks like we'll pick up half a per cent to lift our storages to about 46-and-a-half per cent," he said.